Last week I spent about 2000 words on the plot holes in Equestria Girls thinking that once I ranted about the movie, I could forget about it.

Because there is a certain something to Equestria Girls that is profoundly off. Something that made the movie hard to watch and subsequently put me into an odd mindset once finished. I felt somewhat emotionally unhinged after I watched it, and the poor writing was only part of it.

After all, I’ve experienced plentyofexamples of poor writing, but bad books have never made me feel…off.

I believe the answer to this mystery lies within the Uncanny Valley. Wikipedia defines the Uncanny Valley as, “[the] hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.”

The Uncanny Valley needn’t only be breached with human-like robots or computer animated people though, and Equestria Girls is an example of this: falling into the Valley through its art style.

One of the things I like most about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the aesthetic; one of the things I detest most about Equestria Girls is the aesthetic.

Simply put: Equestria Girls tries to retain the same style as the show it’s spun off from, but the alterations make the characters seem alien, and this makes them seem repulsive. From the colors to the facial expressions, what worked in the show simply doesn't work in the movie.

There is a profound wrongness to the new character designs.

I enjoy the colors of the different ponies, but the bright pastels don’t transfer to their human counterparts. Humans are not purple or pink or light blue. Some have praised this as an homage to Doug, but I disliked the aesthetic of that cartoon too; the oddly-colored characters all looked terminally ill.

The shape of the human designs also leaves much to be desired. Let us overlook the feminist approach to the designs—My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a show aimed at girls that did not promote a certain body style that society says is “correct” or “pretty” whereas Equestria Girls does—and instead simply look at them.

The characters are all unrealistically skinny to a point that borderlines parody. Their bodies are as thick as their thighs, and they are all tall and gangly. There isn’t enough room in their torsos for organs and bones, so watching these almost-human shapes move around in realistic ways is gross.

Likewise, I take umbrage with the facial designs. There’s something off to them. On the one hand, they very much resemble characters I know and enjoy, but on the other hand, they are vastly different. The large eyes work well with the pony designs, but they seem freakish on their human counterparts. Moreover, the male characters all have more normal sized eyes, making the female characters stand out even more, and not for the better. It’s an overly obvious clash in art style, and it makes the character interactions seem awkward, as if two different species of people were communicating.

Their mouths seem overly large at points too. Exaggerated, cartoonish expressions which work in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic just look wrong in Equestria Girls.

It is Pinkie Pie, yet that is not Pinkie Pie.

All of this comes together to create a strong disconnect. The similarities are very visible, but they only exist to enhance what is different, and this combination leaves a result that looks and feels repulsive. I see a character that almost looks like Pinkie Pie, sounds like Pinkie Pie, and is named “Pinkie Pie,” yet she doesn’t look like Pinkie Pie, and her goofy antics which are fun and charming in the show proper don’t mesh with the more realistic looking world that is Equestria Girls.

Bringing Equestria to the real world did more than create plot holes; it created unknown aliens pretending to be well-known characters.

But there is another element to Equestria Girls that felt profoundly off. Throughout the movie, there is this undercurrent crush that Twilight Sparkle has on Flash Sentry, the archetypal “pretty boy” who is popular and in a band. From a narrative perspective, this never pans out to anything, and from a thematic and tonal perspective, it clashes with the show proper and Lauren Faust’s original ideals.

I can, however, overlook those things as they are just more examples of the bad writing in a movie where bad writing is the key to character development and plot progression.

What I can’t overlook is the body dysphoria that Twilight should be having. She goes from a quadruped creature to a bipedal one, and almost everything about her changes in a very physical sense. The repulsion her character design gave me should have been even more present in her, yet all we get are a few screams of surprise and Spike basically telling her to “get over it” (more proof that Spike is the best character, even if he makes a very ugly dog).

Given the kind of movie this is, I suppose I should be happy that her discomfort is dwelt on at all, but I’ve always found it a problem that body-swapping movies always play the phenomenon off for laughs or bad plot points when the actual experience would be terribly jarring at best and horrific at worst.

(I think the only piece of fiction I’ve read that’s ever given this its proper due was A Shadow out of Time by H.P.Lovecraft. It’s only fitting that a horror author would actually see the horror in such an event.)

Twilight Sparkle is in a body that is very much hers yet very much not hers, and then she starts falling for a human boy. How is this at all possible? She has no basis to judge Flash Sentry in a physical sense, yet she never talks to him long enough to find him emotionally attractive.

Her transformation is from something familiar to something she’s never seen before, so she has nothing to go on when studying her surroundings or people. If I mysteriously transformed into a horse, I at least have the help of knowing something about horses and how they function. Twilight Sparkle has none of that. She doesn’t even know what humans eat and has to follow Fluttershy’s example.

Moreover, she’s in a different world with different social norms and structure; she has more important things to worry about and focus on than the local dating pool, though thankfully this side plot is barely acknowledged until the plot demands Flash Sentry help Twilight Sparkle out of a problem.

I found it difficult to watch Equestria Girls for a few reasons, but I believe the biggest one is that which dwells in the Uncanny Valley. When you strip away the charm, the writing, and the previous character development of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, you have little left to work with. When you take that last spark and morph it into something it shouldn’t be, you’re left with a queasy movie that tries to be cute and energetic but shows nothing more than its true intention: a bad commercial to sell toys.

(Though I suppose I should be thankful that the designs aren’t worse given first set of concept art.)

Not that my expectations going in were exactly high; the movie is an hour and twenty minute commercial for a new line of toys that removes what makes My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic special: ponies. Here is a mixture of things no one asked for.

Yet, when I learned that Meghan McCarthy was writing the movie, my hopes...oscillated. She’s responsible for some of the best episodes the series has to offer (“A Canterlot Wedding Parts 1 and 2,” “Lesson Zero,” “Party of One) and some of the worst (“Call of the Cutie,” “The Crystal Empire Parts 1 and 2”), making Equestria Girls an interesting variable.

Curiosity begged I solve for X.

X turned out to be a plot hole, but even that wasn’t surprising given the premise: Let’s send Twilight Sparkle into a human-populated world in search of her crown. I would never hope to call this a good plot, but good writing can usually make bad ideas salvageable. There are plenty of pieces of fiction that fall into “Good idea, bad execution” so it’s only reasonable to assume the opposite exists as well.

But then Twilight Sparkle winds up in a high school and everything falls apart, and the premise of the movie must take all of the blame.

One of the things I like and respect about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is its established set of rules and continuity. Even though Equestria is very much a place situated in a cartoon, it always behaves with a kind of logic. The logic itself might not always be logical, but it fits the world and the style. Likewise, the characters all behave within their respective personalities and abilities (with a few exceptions where one or more characters are forced to act a bit stupid to advance the plot).

Bikini Bottom will morph into whatever is needed to create an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, but Equestria is much more rigid, though it possesses some wiggle room when required.

A cartoon world is allowed to be eccentric; a cartoon world with talking ponies, dragons, and magic is allowed its odd rules and bouts of nonsense. This is why we watch cartoons.

But a human-inhabited world, a familiar world with high schools and Youtube, that is an entirely different matter. A fantastical world is allowed its fantastical features, but a real world must remain real or everything falls apart. What works in Equestria cannot work in this alternate universe.

What Equestria Girls falsely tries to do is bring Equestria into a real world.

Equestria plays host to a portal into another world, though it isn’t a world that has ever been explored. Sunset Shimmer takes Twilight's crown and flees through it. We learn that Sunset Shimmer fled Equestria because she wanted more power, but no one bothered to chase after her or explore this new world. I find this hard to believe; Twilight has already shown curiosity and the scientific method to be present within Equestria (“Feeling Pinkie Keen”), so why has no one thought to explore this new place?

The plot demands Twilight go through the portal, and one of the first things she learns is that magic does not work. Here we have another plot hole: Sunset Shimmer left Equestria for power, yet she decided to live in a world where the one thing that made her powerful—magic—doesn’t exist.

The portal itself poses its own set of questions. In the real world, it’s located at the base of a large statue in front of a school. The portal only opens during certain periods of time, but the fact that no one has accidentally stumbled through it and into Equestria is hard to swallow.

But more than that, if magic doesn’t exist in the real world, how does the portal even function?

After a small bout of Twilight learning how to walk on two legs, she makes her way into the school and finds Principal Cellestia. Twilight tells Principal Cellestia that she’s a new student, and this is willingly believed despite the fact that it isn’t true and the one person who should know that is the principal. She enquires about her crown, which was confiscated and will be the prize for whoever wins the Fall Formal. Twilight decides she will take part and win this popularity contest.

Occam’s Razor states that the simplest solution is the right one, and the simplest way for Twilight to get her crown back would be to present herself as the owner of it and ask for it. We can’t expect Principal Cellestia to believe her story at first, but Twilight does have a talking dog in her backpack and the location of a magical portal into a new universe. That’s some hefty evidence; moreover, an inspection of the crown should show it to be made out of precious metals and not plastic or cheap metals which would normally be the prize of a high school dance.

If that fails her, she could always steal the thing back. It is hers, and no one would begrudge her for petty theft.

Twilight eventually runs into Sunset Shimmer who has morphed into the head bully of the school. She commands respect through fear, and she’s quite proud of herself. It’s hard to know exactly how long she’s been attending this school, but even so, these few sentences open up more questions than answers.

How did she become a pupil at the school without papers?

How does she live, since she has no family or wealth here?

How is she fine with this level of power over having magic in Equestria?

How does she not know that after high school ends, all of her power will go away?

Twilight Sparkle became Princess Celestia’s pupil early in her life (“The Cutie Mark Chronicles”), so Sunset Shimmer must have left Equestria at a very young age. Realistically, she’s been living in the real world long enough to know how feeble, meaningless, and fleeting her power is.

We have some more filler where Twilight runs into the human versions of all of her friends, and it shocked me to hear that they all retained their names. From a toyline perspective, this makes sense, from a narrative perspective, it’s silly. I’ll gladly accept the naming conventions of Equestria for talking ponies, but “Pinkie Pie” and “Rainbow Dash” are not human names.

Within a few hours Twilight sleuths out that Sunset Shimmer has caused her human counterparts to hate each other through tricky methods such as sending false emails and text messages. The fact that that worked at all is a problem. I understand that technology has become a very present thing in our lives and that we overuse email and text messages for communication, but in a school, face-to-face confrontations do exist. Why Apple Jack never walked over to Rainbow Dash and simply asked her why she didn’t show up to her bake sale is an inexcusable lapse in logic.

Reunited, the main six decide Twilight needs to win her crown back. Their solution is to sing a song in front of everyone while at the cafeteria.

The genre conventions of a cartoon like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic demand showtunes, and for the most part, the show has delivered some good songs. Many of the songs in the show drive the plot, but they aren’t important plot points. “Winter Wrap Up” is a three minute piece of exposition disguised in song form; “Art of the Dress” and “Raise this Barn” are montages. There are some songs which were clearly sung and not used as a montage, such as “Giggle at the Ghosties,” but the show saves itself with commentary. A, “is she really doing what I think she’s doing?” kind of line hand waves the absurdity of spontaneous song.

Equestria Girls changes this for the worse. The singing in the cafeteria is played straight; they are very much singing about how good Twilight is at bringing people together and that she should win the Fall Formal ball.

Instead of being laughed at or ignored, the students start dancing and donning items of school pride.

When the characters start singing in the show, I mostly shrug as singing is just something they do. Even when the show acknowledges the fact that the characters are singing and the songs themselves aren’t metaphors, it’s still just part of Equestria.

But that doesn’t work in the real world. The cafeteria song should not have given Twilight the edge in her popularity contest; the cafeteria song should not have been sung at all.

And in the real world, Twilight wouldn’t have had a chance in winning that crown. No one knows who she is, and no one has any right to care about her. The fact that she’s not a student wouldn’t go ignored either, and Sunset Shimmer could have easily mentioned that to disqualify Twilight from the contest.

Let us fast-forward to the end of the movie. Twilight wins her crown, but it is stolen once again by Sunset Shimmer (proving that petty theft really was the easy solution to Twilight’s problems). Sunset Shimmer puts the crown on and suddenly has magic, turning her into some kind of succubus.

This, I can buy. Though magic doesn’t seem to exist in the real world, Twilight’s crown is a magical artifact and should retain its properties. Why it effects Sunset Shimmer in such a way is handwaved with a terrible explanation of “you’re evil so the crown reacts badly to you,” and when she attacks Twilight with it, her magic backfires. This is handled with a Deus Ex Machina as Twilight gains magical abilities and the main six use the Elements of Harmony to defeat Sunset Shimmer. Everyone lives happily ever after.

But, how do these five humans who do not possess magic at all, use magic at the end? They also all pseudomorph, growing longer hair and horse ears, and Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash grow wings. There’s no real reason for this, and since magic doesn’t work in the real world, none of this should have happened.

There’s a common theme throughout My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic of the episodes ending too abruptly. This was a bigger problem in season three than the other two seasons, but it has always been an issue. Episodes end because the show only has 22 minutes to tell a story. Yet in the movie, which has well over an hour to tell its narrative, why does this continue?

The physical changes pretty much go unnoticed, which also makes no sense in a real world where people don’t evolve or morph in the blink of an eye. Sunset Shimmer turns back to normal, but she’s not carted off to be dissected or studied, even though multiple people saw her change into a demon. The same can be said of the main six, who retain their new shapes throughout the dance. Surely students would have taken plenty of pictures of Rainbow Dash flying around.

Yet it seems as if everything simply goes back to normal once Twilight leaves, and all of this magic is forgotten despite the fact that Sunset Shimmer broke part of the school after turning into a demon. That shouldn't be easily forgotten or forgiven.

Equestria Girls is Plot Hole: The Movie, but almost all of the plot holes stem from the fact that Twilight Sparkle goes to a “real world” where the laws that we as humans obey are important. Societal norms that we take for granted on a daily basis are broken, yet no one cares. Magic shows up and property is destroyed, yet no one seems to care.

(The other plot holes stem from lazy or bad writing.)

Equestria Girls brought the rules of Equestria into a real world setting and played everything straight, and Equestria Girls fell apart.

Is this really an experiment now that I'm three for three? Well, I've a naming convention to stick with.

Over the past couple of months I've posted two other pieces of fiction in the second person, those can be found here and here. They were both inspired by a poem and will be placed in a story that has yet to be written but will exist one day. This third bout of second person is also inspired by a long-ago written poem, and one I still have. It is that poem that I wish to turn into a full-fledged story, something evolved and better, for the poem itself is pretty bad. A good idea married with terrible execution.

But good ideas can live on!

I'm really happy with this one, and that really makes me want to start the story soon. It will be nice to take a break from this pretentious, poetic prose.

Somewhere, a place.

Between.

Between time.

Your surroundings bleed into existence inconsistently, leaving you confused and distraught. You want to understand, try to understand, but understanding remains out of reach, teasing you before flying far ahead. There is but one epiphany, and you barely grasp it before it to flies away.

Normalcy doesn’t matter here.

You feel dizzy and sluggish, and you desperately try to find something to focus on, something from your past life that makes sense. Something that won’t easily fly away and mock you out of reach.

Confusion wins.

You close your eyes to shut the alienness out, but the motion is slow and heavy. Unnatural.

Self made darkness blinds you, and you can feel the world still beneath your feat. Focus. Focus. Focus.

Pain.

There is a throbbing pain in your ears and head. It pulses with your heartbeat and slowly begins to spread throughout your being until you are having a full-body migraine. Tears swell inside your closed eyes and slowly seep out; they move down your cheeks in slow motion, painting moist lines against your flesh.

You move your hand to wipe away the tears which stick to your chin, but your hand feels heavy, and the movement is slow, as if you were far under the water.

Thankfully, you can swim.

Fear briefly splits through confusion as you realize you’ve been holding your breath and need air. You open your eyes and flail in panic, but the movement is slow and futile. Black spots explode in front of your vision and your lungs begin to ache until the pain in your chest overshadows the one in your head.

Fight. Fail.

Breathe.

Air fills your lungs and you begin to hyperventilate, inhaling and exhaling at a rapid rate. The air tastes sweet on your tongue, as if you were breathing in sugar. It’s a happy taste, one that reminds you of your childhood, and you laugh.

The pain subsides and understanding perches on your shoulder.

The tears stuck on your chin fall to the ground.

You are standing in a field of tall grass, like the lightest of wheat, that is the most brilliant blue, like the brightest of oceans. The grass is transparent, as if jelly were made into glass. It brushes your body as if blown by a wind, but there is no wind.

The ocean of blue grass moves to and fro, sporadically, as if ghosts were meandering through it to destinations unknown and unimportant.

Noise.

There is a noise, a faint noise, coming from a specific direction and pointing you to a specific destination.

You begin to follow it, walking through the tall grass which cascades blue. Purpose soothes your smile, and curiosity kills your fear. You take a deep breath, inhaling honey made air.

A great pressure smashes into your being and knocks you to your knees. Your body is made sluggish and heavy as it embraces the migraine. You shake and tremble, but the convulsion is slow and weak. You can count the movements as they happen, see the ripples as your muscles contract and expand without your bidding.

All around you the grass bows down, flattened by the pressure of an unseen king.

You force yourself up, slowly, painfully, sluggishly, and continue walking forward. The sound is gone, but you remember the direction, the destination.

You walk.

You think time passes.

And then the world is made right.

The pressure and pain fade, and your movements feel superhuman and fast. The air tastes sweet, and the grass rises and begins to sway. The sound returns.

There is a new clarity to the sound, a rhythm and a melody. It is faint and distorted, but there.

It is a song.

You shout with joy, and begin to jog, the movements feeling unnaturally quick. You need to hear the song, yearn to hear the song.

And then you notice the sky.

The sky is broken, black, cracked. Lines and voids run throughout it, hanging in the air, blocking out a light which radiates from nowhere and everywhere.

Splintered. The sky is splintered with cracks like a bloodshot eye, like a damaged piece of glass, like a worn piece of concrete.

The black pits hold nothing but futility. They are smooth and soft like velvet, but all consuming like death. They play host to nothing.

The unbroken areas are awash in colors. Blues, reds, pinks, oranges, all the colors of a setting sun. They are light and bright, as if they were painted onto a canvas with watercolor ink. They are cheery and wonderful, but there are great patches where they are endangered.

Overrun.

Consumed.

Dead.

The sky is stain-glass window that holds no pictures and tells no story.

You continue to walk, your neck leaned back and your eyes fixated on the sky that isn’t a sky but a meandering painting, and you continue to listen to the song being carried by the wind that doesn’t exist.

All around you the blue grass waves listlessly.

You walk for what feels like hours, and now and then your journey is interrupted by strong bouts of pressure and pain, strong bouts of sluggishness where time is slow and unimportant, but always you walk.

The song continues to get louder, to grow and swell and entice.

It is an odd song made of odd sounds. It is harsh and angry, yet sweet like the air. It sounds instrumental, yet it sounds like no instruments that exist. It is heavy and deep, yet it floats through the air without the aid of a breeze. The sound is a pale blue color, the color of a waterlogged corpse.

You continue to walk and the song continues to grow in volume, until it’s the only thing you can focus on. It is loud, obnoxiously so, but still it is unclear and distorted.

The thought of covering your ears never comes to you.

And then you are on the top of a grand hill, and above you the sky is awash in brilliance. The song grows clear and consuming. You breathe in the honeyed air and feel more alive than you’ve ever felt before.

This is the muse, this is passion, this is God.

You look down and see a large group of creatures, of monsters, of things. Dozens of them, sitting in a circle around a great fire and looking up into the sky. They are singing.

They are hideous and ugly, but yet they are familiar and friendly. Some stand on great legs, others squat or sit or lay down, but they are a group, a people, a society.

And they are singing the song of creation.

The song is terrible in its being, more noise than music, but it is also beautiful. You begin to weep, for the song makes you feel.

You look up into the air, to embrace this picture and this life, and see the sky change. The black voids that once held futility now hold landscapes of every kind. You see a snowy forest of great pine trees that reminds you of home, a bright desert with red-tinted sand that reminds you of familiarity, an ocean of the most perfect shade of blue, a jungle filled with vines and flowers of every color, a rocky valley filled with nothing but wind and sorrow, and many more.

Countless more. Some familiar, but many foreign and alien.

You begin to run down the hill, wanting to see this society, this people, and to hear their music. You yearn to see them sing from up close, even though the song is loud and harsh and hurts your ears.

You approach them openly, unafraid for creatures who create art are not to be feared but befriended and loved.

You approach the settlement with hope and wonder.

And then you see them.

Their skin is a dirty purple, like a jungle mold covering the corpse of a bird of paradise. It reeks of reptilian. Their heads are long and angular, ending in great mouths with hundreds of tiny teeth that look more like needles than fangs, and which emit the most perfect music. Their eyes are a bright yellow that seem to be illuminated from within, and they hold a great knowledge of the universe. Of everything. Their hands are delicate and dainty, yet end in great claws of the brightest white. Their limbs are thick and powerful.

One by one they jump high in the air, miles into the air, and through the sky.

You are afraid, but still you approach, slowly, with great trepidation.

You are spotted.

The creatures turn their attention to you, and their song grows in volume and in anxiety. Yet still it remains a song, and you listen greedily, wanting, wanting, wanting. Your head aches from the noise, but still you listen. The pain grows and you feel a dampness in your ears, but still you listen.

And then the world shudders as a familiar pressure returns. The taste of honey in the air vanishes, the great blue grass bends in submission, and the pain in your head races throughout your body.

But worse, the song dies.

You are slow and weak.

The creatures approach you, unaffected, and as they near, you feel fear and a strong force, a shaking and a foreshadowing.

And as they approach, hungry and wanting and knowing, everything fades away.

Every now and then a book or a series of books come along that, when finished, provide such a strong emotional response that I can’t help but feel weary. This feeling is a mix of sorrow, joy, awe, and a few other nuances as well. A friend of mine likes to call this an existential void, and that seems as apt a definition as any.

When I finished the last line of The Dark Tower by Stephen King, I had that feeling. I put the book down and did nothing of value the rest of that day. I was just done.

The Amber Spyglass provided the same effect.

This surprised me because I’ve read the books before, back in 2007, but six years is a long time and I’m not the person I was back in high school. Similarly, Pullman’s Dark Materials isn’t the same series to me as it was then.

When I finished The Dark Tower series, I put the book down and proclaimed, “This is my favorite series of books” and felt completely fine with that statement. And perhaps it’s because I’m still emotionally raw from the ending to The Amber Spyglass, but I’m strongly tempted to put Pullman’s Dark Materials in second place.

And I’ve read a great many novels.

(Would that I could finish this review here and go onto something else, but that would defeat the purpose of this blog, which is to write. I have a good two pages left to go, I think, before I’ve hit my arbitrary quota.)

There is a strong progression in His Dark Materials that is twofold: The books expand outwards in scope, starting with Lrya and the beginning of her adventure in The Golden Compass and branching into a multiverse with a large set of characters. The Amber Spyglass represents the final expansion in this story progression; the focus of the book is everywhere, because so much more is going on. The second progression is the writing style. The Golden Compass is a “children’s book” and a rebuttal to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicle, but The Subtle Knife sees a move away from that, and The Amber Spyglass finishes that move. This isn’t a children’s book, and it stopped being a parallel to Narnia long ago.

This is Literature.

The Subtle Knife ended with a cliffhanger, and The Amber Spyglass continues on right after with Will Parry who has now been separated from Lyra. And the book does a curious thing, for Lyra was the main character in the first book and a main character in the second, but she doesn’t return to the focus of The Amber Spyglass until around page 120. Will is our main focus for the first ¼ of the book, though Pullman takes ample departures from him to focus on others.

I like this. We get first hand experience with members of the Church, with Mary Malone, with Lord Asriel, and with Marisa Coulter (among others). Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter were the antagonists of the previous novels, mostly acting as bad guys with their proper roles to play. Here, they are fleshed out, given real motives and details, and their role to play evolves from black-and-white villain to something much more nuanced. It’s a much needed change, and I’m glad it happens.

Mary Malone becomes a much more important figure as well, and her moments are very enjoyable. She finds a new world, a fourth one, populated by quadrapedal creatures with a diamond-shaped skeletal frame, and their society and world are both very fun and interesting to explore. These moments also add much to the pacing, since Mary’s segments are slower and involve more mystery than the other segments, which are fast paced and more straightforward (though there’s plenty of mystery hidden away in them).

The first two books in His Dark Materials were rather emotional: characters die and the problems Lyra faces are very real and very large; this trend continues here, and there were moments where I could have cried if I had allowed myself to do so. Pullman masterfully handles his level of detail, and though he spends less words and sentences on descriptions than other authors, what he chooses to focus on provides just as much, if not more, of an emotional response because of it. If the devil is in the details, then the devil is very much in this novel.

Pullman continues his dislike towards religion and religious authority here, and he’s just as blunt as he is in the previous books. The first glimpse we get of the Church is a group of priests plotting the death of Lyra and seeking loopholes so her murder can be sinless in the eyes of God. But, Pullman does more with religion here than in the others, giving us an alternate retelling of the first war in Heaven and of the fall of man. I found his use of religious mythology quite enjoyable, and the influences of Paradise Lost are very clear.

I do have a few issues with The Amber Spyglass though. Like the other two before it, this novel is very plot driven, and as Pullman brings everything together, certain moments feel placed instead of organic. There is a certain scene with a bomb that doesn’t really work, even if it does add some extra levels of tension. Likewise, we learn that every faction as an Alethiometer—a symbol reader—which serves as an easy, and perhaps lazy, way to make sure everyone knows what is going on.

The prophecy of Lyra reaches its conclusion here, but it still feels more like a plot element than anything else. It’s used to create agency around Lyra, and though everything fits together—despite the reader never getting the full prophecy—the characters within the book seem to care more about it than the reader or the author. I’ve seen good and bad uses of prophecy in novels, and this one falls somewhere directly in the middle. It just feels very out of the way.

As the plot threads are trimmed and woven together towards the end, there are a few that feel dropped. I wouldn’t say there are any plot holes, but there are moments that feel like plot holes until they are seriously puzzled out, and then one must wonder if excuses are being made instead of plot holes being filled. None of these are prominent though, and as of writing this, I’ve forgotten the little ones that can be handwaved with a simple excuse, but, when it comes to issues of plot, it is better if the author does the handwaving and not the reader.

As to the ending…it is the right one, and I’ll say no more of it.

The Amber Spyglass is an amazing book, and Pullman’s Dark Materials is a breathtaking trilogy. There are a few minor issues I have with each book, but none that ever bring the series down. It’s utterly fantastic and completely worth your attention.